


Burn Bright

by CandlesInTheWell



Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar, Sunless Sea
Genre: Angst, F/F, Introspection, Slight Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 04:57:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16152068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CandlesInTheWell/pseuds/CandlesInTheWell
Summary: The last night before the Presbyterate Adventuress goes to meet her fate.





	Burn Bright

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vass/gifts).



The Presbyterate Adventuress sits lightly on her narrow bunk, too aware of another’s weight and warmth behind her. She’s safe here – safer than she has been for a long time – but vigilance is a hard habit to break, and vulnerability has never been easy.

“Afraid?” the Brisk Campaigner asks, with military calm. From anyone else, the Adventuress might suspect a taunt, but here and now, she knows better. The Campaigner’s hands are hot against the bare skin of her back, and dry as a paper lantern on the edge of catching. She’s dying. It’s small comfort, the Adventuress thinks, that at least she won’t be dying _first._ She lets her head hang down, breathing out slowly as the Campaigner’s hands draw the ache from her tired muscles, and tries to let herself exist in the moment and not the future. Twelve hours. That’s how long they have together.

“Yes,” she says. “I’m afraid. Who wouldn’t be?” It’s more than a relief to say it at last. It feels like laying down a burden she’s been carrying for years, invisible to everyone else. But she knows what the Campaigner will say next – that no future is unchangeable, that she might yet live, and even return one day to where the mountain rises to meet the sky – and those things, she doesn’t want to hear.

She twists around, meaning to say something, but her voice falters before she can find out what. The Campaigner up close looks different than she does at a distance; there’s something painfully ephemeral in the brightness of her eyes, the small, solid frame marked by years uncountable and the skin lit from within by a ruddy glow. They’ve spoken before of impossibilities, souls and stars, and if the Campaigner is right, there’s hope for one of them. The Adventuress wants to believe it, but she won’t be around to find out.

“That doesn’t mean I regret my choice,” she says. “This is what I want.” She reaches up to brush a wisp of graying hair back from the Campaigner’s face, and in a softer whisper, she adds, “All of it.”

Then she leans in, cupping the Campaigner’s face in one palm, and kisses her – carefully at first, then fiercely, open-mouthed and deep as drowning. One of the Campaigner’s hands comes to rest against the small of her back, pulling her close, and the other curls around the back of her head, holding her still and steady. She breathes in heat, feels it sink into her skin, taking root in the pit of her stomach and branching out to the tips of her fingers and toes. People used to believe that animescence could be caught easily, through poetry or passion or even just wanting too much of anything; the Adventuress isn’t proud of it, but she almost regrets that it isn’t true. Death is cold, they say, and she wouldn’t mind walking into the dark tomorrow with her own soul burning to light the way.

The zee-chill can’t reach her here, but still she feels a shiver run through her as the kiss ends. She doesn’t want to waste any more time wondering what’s coming next, only to feel the Campaigner’s mouth on hers again, and those hands rough on her shoulders, pushing her down and stealing her breath until she won’t think to miss it. She wants teeth and bruises, marks pressed into her skin and memories to carry with her when she goes. But there’s still one question that needs asking, before they both put words aside.

“Do you want me to wait for you, on the dark river?”

“What I want,” the Campaigner says, “is for you to wait with me in _this_ world. But you won’t.”

There’s no bitterness in her voice, or the force of her palm pressed against the Adventuress’s back, but no acceptance either. A trace of anger, but the Adventuress doesn’t think it’s meant for her. And maybe that’s what it means to be a doctor, that willingness to spit at inevitability and make death itself the beast you fight – but the Adventuress is no healer. She doesn’t even know whether it’s defiance or surrender that she’s chosen, only that the choice is hers.

She doesn’t need to apologize for that. She feels the impulse all the same, but before she can give in or deny it, the Campaigner takes her hands, clasps them tight and kisses them one after the other. 

“Go where you need to,” she says, “wherever that might be. If we’re meant to meet again, we will.”

And after that – only heat, only light, and life for as long as it lasts them.


End file.
